The Red Lion: The Elixir of Eternal Life - Softcover

Szepes, Maria; Maria, Szepes; Jozsa, Gizella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965262189 ISBN 13: 9780965262187

Publisher: Horus Pub Inc, 1998

Synopsis

The Red Lion

About this title

About the Author:

Maria Szepes was born Magdolna Scherbach in Budapest, Hungary December 14, 1908. From a theatrical family, she appeared as a film actress under the name Magda Papia from 1916 - 1933. On January 2, 1931 she married Bela Szepes and was happily married to him for 56 years. Initially they lived in Berlin where she worked as a journalist and screenwriter. The Red Lion, Szepes first novel, was published in 1946 in Hungary. It was an immediate bestseller. Considered dissentient by the communist regime, the book was banned and ordered destroyed. Four copies survived and the novel began to be distributed underground. It was eventually smuggled out of Hungary and appeared in the West in 1984. Maria Szepes died in Budapest, Hungary September 3, 2007. She was 98.

From Kirkus Reviews:

paper 0-9652621-8-9 Originally published in 1946 in Hungary, this ambitious and relentlessly arcane novel reshapes the stuff of legend into a compelling, if ponderous, philosophical melodrama. Subtitled ``The Elixir of Eternal Life,'' it recounts the harrowing adventures endured, over a span of four centuries, by Hans Burgner, a 16th-century alchemist's apprentice who murders his master in order to possess a potion rumored to confer the gift of immortality. Having drunk this elixir, Burgner is condemned to be repeatedly reborn, century after century, as a cursed visionary who sees, but is powerless to prevent, the injustices and cruelties that lie in wait for his fellowmen. Eventually purified by his sufferings, Cornelius (Hans's final incarnation) fulfills his destiny: to prophesy, to a world ravaged by war, the reappearance of the Messiah. Discursive and hyperbolic, The Red Lion, a bulky mixture of biblical, alchemical, and historical lore (which rather resembles Eugene Sue's epic romance The Wandering Jew), nevertheless explores with passionate intensity its deeply flawed hero's passage from sin and error, through a world more flawed even than he, to a paradoxical state of grace. It's a very imperfect novel, but a memorable reading experience all the same. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Horus Pub Inc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0965262189
• ISBN 13: 9780965262187
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 390
• Editor: Lawrence Ardi